The Immensity Of The Ocean, The Fury Of
The Breakers, Contrasted With The Lowness Of The Land And The
Smoothness Of The Bright Green Water Within The Lagoon, Can
Hardly Be Imagined Without Having Been Seen.
The earlier voyagers fancied that the coral-building animals
instinctively built up their great circles to afford themselves
protection
In the inner parts; but so far is this from
the truth, that those massive kinds, to whose growth on the
exposed outer shores the very existence of the reef depends,
cannot live within the lagoon, where other delicately-branching
kinds flourish. Moreover, on this view, many species
of distinct genera and families are supposed to combine for
one end; and of such a combination, not a single instance
can be found in the whole of nature. The theory that has
been most generally received is, that atolls are based on
submarine craters; but when we consider the form and size of
some, the number, proximity, and relative positions of others,
this idea loses its plausible character: thus Suadiva atoll is
44 geographical miles in diameter in one line, by 34 miles in
another line; Rimsky is 54 by 20 miles across, and it has a
strangely sinuous margin; Bow atoll is 30 miles long, and on
an average only 6 in width; Menchicoff atoll consists of three
atolls united or tied together. This theory, moreover, is
totally inapplicable to the northern Maldiva atolls in the
Indian Ocean (one of which is 88 miles in length, and between 10
and 20 in breadth), for they are not bounded like ordinary
atolls by narrow reefs, but by a vast number of separate
little atolls; other little atolls rising out of the great
central lagoon-like spaces.
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